Well, i guess its a change in the course....
AS SECTARIAN violence rises in Iraq and the White House comes under increasing pressure to revamp its strategy there, a debate is emerging inside the Bush administration: Should the U.S. abandon its efforts to act as a neutral referee in the ongoing civil war and, instead, throw its lot in with the Shiites?
A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost.
This past Veterans Day weekend, according to my sources, almost the entire Bush national security team gathered for an unpublicized two-day meeting. The topic: Iraq. The purpose of the meeting was to come up with a consensus position on a new path forward. Among those attending were President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor Stephen Hadley, outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.
Numerous policy options were put forward at the meeting, which revolved around a strategy paper prepared by Hadley and drawn from his recent trip to Baghdad. One was the Shiite option.
I suppose this is one of those "lowering the goals" moments we were warned would happen as Bush tries to find SOME way of winning in Iraq. I'm not sure that this is the way to do it. Nothing good seems to ever come of throwing assistance in with throwing in with one side specifically.. Just more ethnic cleansing. And don't forget that Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA to help support a US cause. We need to think long term here.
The last thing we need long term is to bring the Sunni's closer to Al-Qaeda, and to build SUPPORT for teh insurgency.
I think the sad fact is, we've already LOST Iraq. We won't "win" there no matter what, due to bad planning from the Bush administration.Its a little late to try and fix it now. All we can do is try to limit the loss of our troops lives, adn try to minimize the violence between the iraqi sects.
TRuthfully, I almost thing that dividing Iraq into smaller countries by ethnicity might be more effective than this proposed idea of supporting the SHiites. Obviously the ethnicities would still be fighting, but there would be less reason for violence, since neither would be controlling the government and using it to endanger the other sect(as Sunni's have seen done before, and fear)
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